These past couple weeks have been rather busy with ‘IRL’
stuff so naturally things like this have been pushed to the side. That being said, I enjoyed a little game over
the weekend that I want to talk about in regards to a relatively modern
architectural design choice.
Receiver is a very small indie-fps title from Wolfire Games
created as part of a 7 day fps game challenge which looks to create
quasi-realistic gun mechanics. Whereas in
a conventional fps the reloading mechanics are a single button press; receiver
includes individual bullets, magazine loading, checking the chamber and
releasing the hammer to name a few. It’s
a rather confusing experience when you initially load in, but after around
15-20minutes the gunplay was making sense and it becoming rather
enjoyable.
Alongside these mechanics there is RNG based level design,
item placement and enemy locations that keep you on your toes as you navigate
your surroundings. One may call this a ‘roguelike’
in terms of its permadeath and random starting loot, but I feel it’s more
towards a tactical shooter by its combat mechanics.
While playing this game, I got a feeling of a couple schools
of thought in design and play on the concept apparent in Receiver. Firstly there was the age old ‘form vs.
function’ theory that discusses the relationship between aesthetics (form) and
mechanics (function). In architecture,
this can sometimes be the nature between an engineer and an architect but
certain eras in architecture have gone one way or another e.g. Brutalism tends
to be on the side of ‘function’.
Receiver is a game of pure mechanics in its gunplay while its aesthetics
are rather spartan in its night time city-scape and plain rooms. Not to say that this is a bad thing as one
should remember this was made in 7 days…
The other feeling I got from this game was a kind of Deconstructionism
/ Victorian industrial ideology that turns the ‘function’ side of the debate into
its own aesthetic. A couple examples of
these traits include London Paddington Station; Lloyds building in London and
the Pompidou Centre in Paris. Each of
these examples uses the structure, the framework and the stuff that is usually
hidden away behind walls in conventional buildings to create their own pieces
of art and design through architecture. Looking
at these examples, one can see a correlation of Receiver and typical fps games
through the use of the reloading mechanic; as the simple press of a button
(usually R) is now a fully-fledged mechanic to take into consideration. There are games that have played around with
the reload mechanics in the past (one of the more famous examples being Gears
of War) but I feel this is the most literal and by proxy the closest to the
above architectural theory.
To be honest, I grabbed this game on the Humble Store end of
summer sale for free, but you may find it interesting to review in how minor
aspects of design can be created into a new format. Outline theories you may want to look at
include symbolism, discussion of ‘space’ and usage of signs in culture but
overall I hope you found this discussion interesting.
References / further reading
*Receiver, Wolfire Games (2012)
*Eco, U. Function and
Sign: The Semiotics of Architecture
*Barthes, R. Semiology
and the Urban
*Bachelard, G. Poetics
of Space
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